Débats sur la lecture de La Fontaine par les enfants

Synopsis

Synopsis

• Rousseau had eloquently put the case against teaching La Fontaine’s fables to children in his discussion of « Le corbeau et le renard » in Émile (1762, Émile, OC, vol. IV, p. 351–357). His opposition was threefold : First, children had no idea what the fables actually meant ; second, if they were told what they meant, they learned some bad lessons, such as that some people lie and swear ; and third, the fables don’t tell the truth about the reality of things ; for example, they suggest that crows speak, and so forth. His heroine, Julie, also rejects La Fontaine for the education of children (Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, OC, vol. II, p. 581).

• Charrière’s miserably-married but eager-to-please young heroine Mistriss Henley teaches her step-daughter to recite « Le chêne et le roseau » (in French) to her father : instead of being pleased he suggests that it would be better to put truths in her head before fictions, and teach her history and geography instead. Mistriss Henley tries to, and both she and the child get very bored, and she stops teaching her at all.

• Interestingly, whether the recital of La Fontaine’s fables should or should not play a part in the education of a young child reappears in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre : The young Adèle Varens treats her new governess to a display of her accomplishments, showing off in turn her singing, her speaking, and her dancing. Jane Eyre finds it all in very bad taste, and by the end of the novel is pleased to see that « a sound, English education [had] corrected in a great measure her French defects » (Jane Eyre, éd. Jane Jack and Margaret Smith [Oxford, England, The Clarendon Press, 1969], p. 124 [vol. 1, ch. XI], p. 576 [vol. 3, ch. XII]).